What I Want to Learn about Mobility at SAPPHIRE Now 2011

First I want to say that I will be at SAPPHIRE NOW 2011 and hope to see all of you there. I will be running around like a crazy man interviewing mobility experts, recording videos, leading sessions, moderating panel discussions and meeting with SAP executives. I would love to learn more about the mobility projects each of you are working on, so let’s grab a table and talk. You can contact me on Twitter @krbenedict.

Second, I really hope that SAP and Sybase will unveil ambitious, innovative, powerful and leading edge kinds of mobile solutions at Sapphire Now 2011, not just mobile apps from SAP partners. For $5.8 billion I think it would be nice to show a few compelling and interesting SAP developed mobile apps. I hope that the list of new mobile applications will include much more than just the light weight mobile apps that I have seen to date. Come on! This is 2011! I was building more interesting mobile applications in 2004. My team practically built complete ERPs on mobile devices in 120 days (seriously).

Some of the mobility solutions that my teams developed between 2004 and 2008 were:

Mobile oil rig safety solutions

Mobile coffee sales and service solutions that included field services, product sales, asset management and inventory management

Water conservation solutions for reducing water use in UK’s council house

Mobile HVAC field services applications that included asset management and geo-tagging

Mobile hurricane disaster assessment solutions

Mobile cattle management and life cycle (hoof to shelf) management

Mobile furniture delivery, inspection and repair solutions

Mobile new car inspection, assessment and repair solutions

Mobile water delivery solutions for an African company

To me, interesting mobile solutions are ones like SAP customer Skanska mentioned in a February press release. The features included dynamic scheduling, site schematic diagrams, safety procedures, project plans and customer and asset historical information.

I don’t sell or develop mobile solutions any longer so I am NOT marketing them, I am just making a point.

Third, I want to hear how SAP and Sybase will be restructuring their organizations to rapidly deliver world class mobile solutions. SAP has had enough time to recognize the good, bad and the ugly concerning the Sybase acquisition and should be making the organizational changes necessary to execute on a good plan. I have heard bits and pieces but look forward to seeing the official plan.

Fourth, I want to know how SAP is going to address mobility in the cloud. At some point soon, supporting a mobility platform (SUP) in-house is going to have a diminishing return. Much like SAP’s recent move to get involved in EDI and B2B e-commerce with the SAP Information Interchange, an EDI service in the cloud, companies are going to want a simple API to access their back office data, not SUP that needs a C programmer to implement. The trend also seems to be for mobile devices to be secured and managed via a cloud service.

Fifth, I want to learn how SAP is going to integrate M2M (machine to machine) wireless communications into enterprise asset management (EAM) and field services. Most new automobiles, trucks, tractors, equipment, appliances and other high value assets now have sensors with embedded wireless chips that can report their status, location and thousands of other pieces of important data. This data is an important component to an activity based business intelligence solution.

Sixth, I want to see if SAP/Sybase have figured out how to simplify their enterprise mobility message and guidance for companies. The message and guidance needs to be a step by step set of instructions that lead customers to be able to make confident decisions around:

Mobile architectural frameworks

Mobile technology infrastructures

Mobile user experience frameworks

Mobile device management

Mobile application management

Mobile user management

Mobile security management

Mobility policies and governance

I thank Dr. Ahmed El Adl for the above list. If a customer leaves a meeting with SAP/Sybase more confused after the meeting than before, then it was not a successful meeting.

What other enterprise mobility issues and solutions do you want to learn about at SAPPHIRE Now 2011? Please share by adding comments below.